ount Menko, this man of honor, the one in whom I believed blindly, was
married! Married at Vienna, and had already given away the name on which
he traded! Oh, it is hideous!" And the Tzigana, whose whole body was
shuddering with horror, recoiled instinctively to the edge of the divan
as at the approach of some detested contact.

Michel, his face pale and convulsed, had listened to her with bowed head.

"All that you say is the truth, Marsa; but I will give my life, my whole
life, to expiate that lie!"

"There are infamies which are never effaced. There is no pardon for him
who has no excuse."

"No excuse? Yes, Marsa; I have one! I have one: I loved you!"

"And because you loved me, was it necessary for you to betray me, lie to
me, ruin me?"

"What could I do? I did not love the woman I had married; you dawned on
me like a beautiful vision; I wished, hoping I know not what impossible
future, to be near you, to make you love me, and I did not dare to
confess that I was not free. If I lied to you, it was because I trembled
at not being able to surround you with my devotion; it was because I was
afraid to lose your love, knowing that the adoration I had for you would
never die till my heart was cold and dead! Upon all that is most sacred,
I swear this to you! I swear it!"

He then recalled to her, while she sat rigid and motionless with an
expression of contempt and disdain upon her beautiful, proud lips, their
first meetings; that evening at Lady Brolway's, in Pau, where he had met
her for the first time; their conversation; the ineffaceable impression
produced upon him by her beauty; that winter season; the walks they had
taken together beneath the trees, which not a breath of wind stirred;
their excursions in the purple and gold valleys, with the Pyrenees in the
distance crowned with eternal snow. Did she not remember their long talks
upon the terrace, the evenings which felt like spring, and that day when
she had been nearly killed by a runaway horse, and he had seized the
animal by the bridle and saved her life? Yes, he had loved her, loved her
well; and it was because, possessing her love, he feared, like a second
Adam, to see himself driven out of paradise, that he had hidden from
Marsa the truth. If she had questioned one of the Hungarians or Viennese,
who were living at Pau, she could doubtless have known that Count Menko,
the first secretary of the embassy of Austria-Hungary at Paris, had
married the heires